Boston Direct Health | Your Primary Care Partners
Take back control of your medical care, by working directly with your Primary Care Physician in Boston without insurance impeding the healthcare and wellness services you deserve.
Boston Direct Health modernizes primary care by utilizing the Direct Primary Care (DPC) model. DPC medical practices have a monthly subscription providing access to the Boston Direct Health’s medical team. The monthly fee covers all the medical visits at the practice whether you are coming in for preventative visits, nutritional counseling, management of high blood pressure or diabetes, management of sick visits, or urgent care needs.
Patients have the option to conveniently communicate with their doctors and the health care team through text, phone calls, emails and secure portal messaging. Messages are responded to in a timely manner. You are able to communicate with YOUR doctor 24/7.
Medication refill requests are typically completed within a day or two. With our boutique doctor style direct primary care services we eliminate the hassle of extensive waiting time for refill scripts.
Boston Direct Health still works in conjunction with your health insurance. The difference is we don’t bill health insurance for your care visits. There are no surprise bills from our medical practice, no co-payments, and no need to worry about deductibles.
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This is how Boston Direct Health differs from typical concierge medicine doctors in the Boston, Massachusetts area. Most concierge doctors charge a monthly or yearly fee to provide access to their medical practice and the doctors but they still bill the health insurance of their members.
Unlike these other concierge doctor businesses, at Boston Direct Health we avoid surprising our patients with unforeseen costs such as co-pays and bills for medical visits. Health insurance can still be used to cover prescription medications, lab work, imaging studies such as XRays and MRIs, and referrals to specialists.
It’s like changing health insurance into car insurance. With car insurance, you pay out of pocket to keep your car running, paying for the gas, oil changes, yearly maintenance tests, but keep insurance in the event of an accident. At Boston Direct Health, we want to keep you healthy so that you don’t need to use your health insurance for your healthcare.
Procedures
With primary care from Boston Direct Health, we provide these medical procedures, in-office, at no additional costs;
*Aesthetic and Sexual Health procedures are not included
We still recommend patients carry health insurance. The subscription to Boston Direct Health does not meet the state or federal requirements for health insurance, it does not cover any medical care provided by providers outside of Boston Direct Health such as in a hospital or another facility. We work with employer groups to provide additional healthcare benefits for their employees.
Additional Health Care
As part of our primary care services, we provide the following additional health care support.
At Boston Direct Health, Dr. Steven Zivich believed that comprehensive preventative care is the key to long-term health. At every visit we strive to identify risk factors for diabetes, heart disease, cancer and stroke before there is a problem. Consequently, due to our direct primary care model, we are able to spend more time looking into a patient’s nutritional habits, day-to- day stressors, sleep habits, exercise and health metrics, bloodwork, additional labs, and imaging tests. Bloodwork and labs performed are customized to the needs of each patient, thorough hormone testing and vitamin testing can be performed simultaneously, as well as more extensive functional medicine labs.
Advanced Healthcare for Athletes
Cardiometabolic Management
We offer support for Diabetes, high blood pressure, and assist in monitoring risk factors for heart attacks and strokes. We review dietary habits, find physical movement plans that work with our patients’ lifestyle, recommend supplements when appropriate,, and manage medications. We have an EKG in office to monitor the heart and are able to refer to outside facilities for cardiac stress testing, echocardiograms, calcium scores and additional testing.
Mental Health Monitoring
Access to mental health providers is challenging. We do not have psychiatrists on staff nor mental health counselors. However, we do work closely with our patients in the management of anxiety and depression, including management of mental health medications.
Our holistic approach to the management of stress, anxiety and depression looks at patients’ sleep patterns, nutrition, exercise, the monitoring of hormone and vitamin levels- all factors that may affect mood.
We may recommend a combination of supplements, herbs, nutritional changes, physical activity, working with therapists, acupuncturists and prescription medications to elevate your mood and relieve feelings of stress and anxiety.
Mental health greatly affects our physical health – affecting our sleep, intensifying pain, causing more digestive disturbances, negatively affecting our sexual function.
No Judgment, Complete Care
Use of Illicit Drugs and/or Anabolic Steroids:
We do not recommend patients to utilize illicit drugs and the most medically safe option is to abstain and utilizing anabolic steroids can come with a multitude of side effects.
However, we want our patients to feel comfortable and safe with communicating with their medical team so that we can monitor for potential side effects and mitigate the risks as much as possible. Our medical team has a great understanding of anabolic agents such as trenbolone, oxandrolone, etc and the effects on the body. We recommend patients to not use anabolics, however if patients choose to use them we want to ensure that they are comfortable communicating to their healthcare team so that we can monitor organ function, hormone levels and try and mitigate the side effects as much as medically possible.
We do manage men with testosterone replacement therapy who are symptomatic and confirmed by laboratory levels. We do not prescribe testosterone for improved athletic performance, testosterone replacement therapy is different then taking anabolic steroids.
Accordingly, we also want our patients to feel that they can be open and feel no judgment for their recreational use of substances such as “G”, Ketamine, and Methamphetamine. We do encourage the cessation of drug use, especially due to our medical understanding of the side effects of overuse, long term use and withdrawal.
We understand that addiction is a lifelong, chronic disease. Currently, we do not prescribe methadone or suboxone for opioid addiction. We do assist patients who want to obtain sobriety guiding them to the many resources in the Boston area advocating for the medical care we all deserve while ensuring access to naloxone
Sexual Practices:
We want our patients to feel comfortable talking about their sexual preferences and sexual habits.
We provide simplified access to HIV screening and STD screening and we are able to get patients into the office for screening often on the same day as requested. We have the ability to treat patients if any test results come back as positive. View all sexual health services from Boston Direct Health.
FAQs
Read FAQs about primary care services from Boston Direct Health:
What Insurances do you take?
We are out of network for all health insurance companies including Medicare and Masshealth.
We still work with health insurance when it comes to your prescription medications, laboratory work, imaging studies and referrals to other specialists and hospitals. Health insurance does not cover the costs of the medical care provided by Boston Direct Health. We have chosen to work directly with patients to have more control on the quality of medical care that patients deserve, oppose to working within the confines of the health insurance system.
What type of patients do you treat?
Boston Direct Health treats patients of all ages, genders and sexual orientations.
Are you accepting new patients for Primary Care?
Yes, we do require an initial screening to determine if you are an ideal candidate for our Direct Primary Care services in Boston and then a membership contract to be completed and returned with a form of payment for monthly billing. Please complete the contact form below or call (xxx) xxx-xxxx to have any additional questions answered.
Can I use my flex spending account FSA funds or my health savings accounts HSA funds towards my monthly membership fee?
Yes, HSA (Health Savings Accounts) and FSA (Flexible Savings Accounts) can be used to pay for the monthly fee for primary care services.
Does my membership fee qualify as a tax deduction?
While we can not offer advice on tax preparation, it is not uncommon for this type of medical expense to qualify as a tax deductible expense since our patients receive medical services/visits for the monthly fee. We recommend connecting a qualified tax professional in regards to this question.
Comprehensive Primary Care in Boston
The biggest strength of Boston Direct Health’s primary care services remains the ease of communicating with your healthcare team and your Doctor.
We ensure every patient has an in-depth understanding of what is going on with their body. Boston physician Dr. Steven Zivich and staff will carefully explain your laboratory findings and imaging findings in understandable terms and provide treatment plans to help you achieve optimal health.
We provide patients with the opportunity to develop an intimate, long-term relationship with their Primary Care Provider (PCP) so that in the event of a dire medical condition, you have someone in your corner that you trust and that you can reach out to. A team of highly-experienced and caring medical professionals that will help explain what’s going on, what the next steps should be, and what options there are with any difficult medical decisions. If you reside in the Boston area, and want to experience a better healthcare process, call 617-304-1965 today to schedule your initial consultation.
BDH Patient Agreement
BDH Patient Agreement Addendum
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